The in-house legal function, by its very nature, is a gatekeeper role whose primary focus is to ensure that the organisation avoids costly legal risks.
This inherent role can lead to a perception that the legal function is merely a cost centre of naysayers, which perception can demoralise the legal team and menialise its contribution.
In our experience, this perception can actively be dispelled by taking steps to manoeuvre the legal department into a value-adding resource and business enabler.
In this article, we set out some tips and considerations for in-house counsel, which can go a long way to underscoring their value to the business.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to provide comprehensive legal advice without understanding the business’s core objectives.
In-house legal advisors must actively understand the business’ key strategic objectives by participating in executive strategy sessions at the conceptual stage.
Being keenly attuned to the business strategy, goals, and targets enables you to –
- influence the strategic direction of the business;
- identify and raise key contractual and regulatory risks early;
- co-create senior legal risk mitigating measures with senior management; and
- align the legal department’s agenda with the stated objectives.
It is also advisable to attend key engagements with shareholders, directors, and executives as this will go a long way to enhance your understanding of the key performance indicators.
It is important to be aware of the action plans that the front-line teams will implement to attain their departmental targets.
This entails regularly engaging with the frontline teams both formally and informally as they plot the day-to-day steps to drive sales.
You can use these engagements to –
- provide practical training and highlight actual instances where well-intentioned but aggressive tactics have caused legal problems; and
- enhance the synergies with the front-line departments to iron out legal policy and process issues that are negatively affecting their plans.
Showing an interest at the operational level will also endear you to the front-line teams and allow you to outline your primary goal to protect the business from costly legal risks.
Informal engagements tend to yield much more in-depth information than formal sittings in which employees tend not to speak up.
Find ways to gather intelligence, for example by engaging around the coffee station, lunching with employees from other teams, and attending internal functions and events.
Interacting informally with employees at all levels helps to cultivate a culture where in-house legal advisors are not isolated and feared but accepted as valuable team players.
Such interactions also serve to breed empathy in the in-house legal team by giving them insights into the pressure that colleagues in other teams are under.
It is also critical to understand (but not necessarily participate in) the politics in the organisation, not only in respect of personalities but also inter-departmental contestation.
Inhouse counsel will also benefit from investing in understanding the interests of external stakeholders (e.g. union representatives, customers, and suppliers) and their pain points in dealing with the organisation.
Legal teams typically only interact with these stakeholders in negotiations and/or disputes and rarely get a chance to engage with them in informal settings.
Interacting with these stakeholders outside of formal forums enables you to –
- understand the personalities behind the positions taken on contested legal issues;
- be aware of pertinent issues in the wider industry, both upstream and downstream; and
- build relationships that will smooth over difficult negotiations in the future.
Investing in these interactions will yield the fruits of enhanced speed of contractual negotiations and effective resolution of disputes.
Most in-house legal departments are generally understaffed, which constrains their ability to deliver the requisite levels of service.
This drives the need for external counsel to handle high-level inquiries and to help manage the workload and meet the deadlines without compromising the quality of work.
In-house counsel must ensure that they have the best legal minds on retainer to service the need for external legal advice by –
- actively build networks within the legal industry;
- staying abreast of rated legal experts in various fields; and
- provide honest reviews to global rankings’ services when called upon.
The choice of external counsel for each specific instruction must be based on merit as, even in the more prominent law firms, not all partners are equal.
Being an in-house counsel can be a lonely existence, but it is important to overcome self-doubt and avoid the perception of being a “post-box” for external counsel.
In-house counsel must be bold enough to refuse to refer matters to external counsel where they are certain about the advice that they have given.
A simple cheat code is to have other legal professionals on speed dial as a sounding board whenever you are in doubt of your views on a topic.
Giving in to demands from the business for unnecessary external opinions can set a dangerous precedent of second-guessing internal advice, which undermines your credibility.
Where it is genuinely necessary to brief external counsel, you must understand the legal issues intimately before issuing the instruction, not only to improve the quality of the brief but also to be able to assess the quality of the advice.
In-house legal advisors can transform the “cost-centre” perception to one of a business-enabler by taking measures, which include: Getting involved in strategy sessions and target-setting at the conceptual stage.
- Regularly engaging with frontline teams on their implementation plans.
- Gathering organisational intelligence through informal interactions.
- Interacting with key customers, suppliers, and other external stakeholders.
- Retaining top-level legal subject-matter experts to boost in-house capacity.
- Standing by your opinion and only briefing external counsel when necessary.
Takuva Attorneys is the GC’s friend. Our Fractional General Counsel services support GCs to meet the extraordinary demands that are placed on them by their organisations.
